Making Missouri a major center for the music of tomorrow

The Mizzou New Music Summer Festival is delighted to have pianist Lisa Moore (pictured) as a guest performer.

Born in Canberra and raised in Australia and London before moving to the USA in 1980, Moore is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Eastman School of Music and SUNY Stonybrook. She now lives in New York City, where she collaborates with a large and diverse range of musicians and artists. The New York Times says “her energy is illuminating” and the New Yorker magazine called her “visionary” and “New York’s queen of avant-garde piano.”

A founding member of the NYC downtown new-music group Bang on a Can All-Stars, Moore has released five solo CD on the Cantaloupe and Tall Poppies labels, and appears as a collaborator on more than 30 other discs. Her most recent solo recording for Cantaloupe, Seven, features music by Don Byron; two more solo Cantaloupe EPs are scheduled for release in 2010, featuring original music by composers Annie Gosfield and Donnacha Dennehy. You can hear sample tracks from many of Moore’s recordings on her website.

She has played at concert halls and festivals around the world, and has performed with organizations ranging from ballet companies and symphony orchestras to chamber music groups and new music ensembles. As a concerto soloist she has appeared with the London Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Albany, Sydney, Tasmania, Thai and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia Virtuosi and the Queensland Philharmonic, under the baton of conductors Brad Lubman, Reinbert de Leeuw, Pierre Boulez, Jorge Mester and Edo de Waart.

As an artistic curator she produced Australia’s Canberra International Music Festival “Sounds Alive ‘08” series, importing musicians from around the world for 10 days of music making at the Street Theatre. Moore teaches at the Yale-Norfolk New Music Workshop Summer Festival and at Wesleyan University as well as making guest teaching appearances at conservatories around the world.

You can hear an interview Lisa Moore did in 2008 with public radio station WNYC by clicking on the embedded audio player below:

In the first video window, you can see and hear an excerpt from Moore’s performance of “For the Sexes:The Gates of Paradise,” composed by Martin Bresnick, who, as fate would have it, is one of the guest composers/instructors at the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival. Below that is a clip of Moore playing Frederic Rzewski’s “Piano Piece No. 4 (1979)” in 2008 at the Keys to the Future Festival

Here’s another in our series of brief profiles of the eight resident composers who will be part of the inaugural Mizzou New Music Summer Festival:

The music of Milwaukee native Christopher Dietz (pictured) has been recognized with honors and awards from the Camargo Foundation, the Banff Centre, Copland House, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, the Minnesota Orchestra Reading Sessions and Composer Institute and several other institutions.

Dietz earned a Ph.D. in Composition and Theory from the University of Michigan, as well as degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Wisconsin. He currently is a visiting assistant professor at the Oberlin Conservatory in Oberlin, OH. Recent commissions include works for the Mellon Foundation, the Toledo Symphony and the Utah Arts Festival Orchestra.

There are a few sample recordings of Dietz’ music online. His work Gharra, commissioned by the Utah Arts Festival Orchestra in 2007 and since performed by three more orchestras, can be heard online here (if you have Apple QuickTime).

Also, percussionist Matthew Peters has put online .mp3 files of his performances of two solo marimba pieces composed by Dietz, “King of the Logs” and “The Peters Variations.” Lastly, a very short excerpt of Deitz’ piece “De Profundis,” composed for and recorded by the Toledo Clarinets, can be heard here.